2019 CGIAR Big Data in Agriculture Platform Convention

Data and digital tools show great promise for intermediating collective action yet more needs to be understood. This session will explore the ways in which technology can inform the commons and how technical solutions can be leveraged for collective action.

At their best, information systems can help us to manage complexity, track our progress and build collective action. In this session we will look at three interlinking examples of information systems intended to capture this value for CGIAR:

Philippe Ellul, Senior Program Officer, will present the CGIAR Level Research Interoperability System (CLARISA), a dashboard consolidating CGIAR result-based management systems across the consortium.
Marie Angelique Laporte will present a pilot of the Sustainable Development Goals Interface Ontology for tracking progress and building transparency around the CGIAR Strategic Results Framework in light of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Brian Lowe of Ontocale will present the newly-developed “Find a CGIAR Expert” system, an ontology-based tool for identifying expertise and collaborative relationships within CGIAR.

This parallel plenary session will cover two important topics in building enabling environments:

(10:30AM) What is holding back collective action and scaling of AgR4D innovations? - Agricultural Research-for-Development (AgR4D) struggles to scale innovations intended to reach smallholder farmers, cooperatives and SMEs in emerging markets. In an effort to better understand the constraints to collective action and scaling, the CGIAR Platform for Big Data and One Planet Solutions are consulting a broad range of participants across the global AgriFood Tech ecosystem, including (impact investors, established companies, start-ups, public research organizations, and others). There is emerging consensus that the world needs new, expansive alliances to build climate-resilient food systems. Efforts to build them have shown promise, but successful examples in AgR4D are few and far between. In this session we examine the bottlenecks to scaling/adoption, aligning interests across an array of actors, and collaboration models/tools that could begin to serve as a unifying framework for more effective collective action.
   Rodrigo Sara
   Christian Merz
   Shruti Srivastava
   Madhur Jain

(11:15 AM) Innovation places and processes - The Convention is an exciting time for innovation, and the Inspire Challenge is an important part of the Platform and its reason for being. What does it mean to create space for innovation, both literally and figuratively? In this session, we'll hear about findings on the Inspire Challenge from last year, and from some experts working on building the right environments for innovation.
   Kelly Wong
   Ram Dhulipala
   Carolina Roa
   Yvonne Pinto
   Shanta Thoutam